


Umbrellas Underwater

by finx



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M, Gen, anyway please enjoy my headcanons about Iroh, but I'd like to think there's a thread of emotional continuity, or at the very least a level of immersion that feels storylike, this is too loosely connected to be called a story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:40:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27816229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/finx/pseuds/finx
Summary: Iroh left the Fire Nation capital a proud general, filled with the passion of his element and the careless, easy confidence of those who have grown up blessed. In those days he laughed often, smiled at everyone, and dispensed kindnesses like a game. He rode to war at the head of a shining battalion, his son at his side and the whole world laid out at his feet.He came back with white in his hair and age in his gait, at the head of a ragged company, with no one at his side but loss.Eight headcanons about Iroh.
Relationships: Iroh & Iroh's Wife (Avatar), Iroh & Ozai (Avatar)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7





	Umbrellas Underwater

_Iroh left the Fire Nation capital a proud general, filled with the passion of his element and the careless, easy confidence of those who have grown up blessed. In those days he laughed often, smiled at everyone, and dispensed kindnesses like a game. He rode to war at the head of a shining battalion, his son at his side and the whole world laid out at his feet._

_He came back with white in his hair and age in his gait, at the head of a ragged company, with no one at his side but loss._

**_eight_ **

When Iroh took Zuko under his wing, it wasn’t because he saw himself in Zuko. It wasn’t even because he saw his son in Zuko – that would have been too painful to bear, even several years after his death. It was because of how much of his family he _didn’t_ see in Zuko. Where Iroh had been arrogant, Zuko was shy. Where Ozai was coldly ambitious, Zuko was generous. Where the Fire Lord was dispassionate and calculating, Zuko cared about people. Where Azula was—well, the less said about Azula the better. But Zuko was nothing like her, and if Iroh had anything to say about it, he never would be.

**_seven_ **

Iroh met his wife in winter, under the boughs of the only tree in the palace gardens that blossomed in that season. Their marriage was not yet arranged, but they both knew it was likely to happen. She smiled at him, shy and hesitant under the star-white senko blossoms, and admitted with a self-deprecating smile, “I think I’m meant to seduce you.” 

Iroh laughed, and said, “Our parents can worry about that. Why don’t we talk about something else? Do you like the theater? There’s an excellent production of _Zukon the Dragon-Slayer_ on in the city.” 

After the play, they walked arm in arm through the city parks, under trees that were dark and drooping in the tropical winter, and talked about dragons and history and storytelling. They never once touched on politics or weddings. 

It was only after several more months of such outings that Iroh turned to her, with all the solemnity of youth, and said, “I know what our parents have planned, and it’s not a plan that I could ever object to. Spending time with you is the brightest part of my day. But I would rather work the rest of my life on forging alliances with your family myself than see you unhappy. If you don’t want this marriage to happen, it won’t. I will see to it that it won’t have to.”

They weren’t in love. They both knew this. But Iroh thought he could grow to love her, that he could be happy the rest of his days with her at his side. He hoped she felt the same, but—

She stared at him in shock, and then started to laugh. Iroh turned away, embarrassed and awkward, ashamed of his sentimentality. He didn’t see her face when she called him an idiot, and he was taken by surprise when she turned him around, still laughing, and kissed him.

**_six_ **

Iroh and Bumi get along like a house on fire. Sometimes literally, because they have a lot of friendly duels and those can get a little out of hand. In the years after the war, they exchange lots of correspondence, and Iroh visits Omashu a lot. Whenever he does, the whole city despairs, because now there are _two_ unreasonably buff old men with mad bending skills walking around, delighting small children with their antics and imparting cryptic wisdom to shopkeepers.

**_five_ **

Iroh loves his brother. That never changed, even as Ozai stole the throne, abused his children, killed… no, surely Ozai would never kill his wife. Surely not. Iroh won’t believe it. But even so, Ozai has done horrible things, become a monster worse than their father, and Iroh loves him still. 

Iroh tries to reason with him, tries to fight him, and it never seems to make any difference. So Iroh works against him, secretly, with the rest of the White Lotus, and his heart is heavy as he does.

Iroh sees his brother challenge Zuko to an Agni Kai when the boy is only thirteen years old, sees his brother mutilate his own son in public, sees the unrelenting rage in his brother’s face as he does it. 

Iroh gives up.

Iroh loves his brother. He never stops loving him, till the day he dies. But he never forgives him, either.

**_four_ **

Iroh did not earn the name “Dragon of the West” because he can breathe fire. That’s a joke he used to tell Azula and Zuko when they were children, and then he’d dazzle them with firebending tricks. He told it again a few times during Zuko’s exile, one of his many efforts at being a goofy old man, and that’s part of why Zuko knows exactly what he’s planning when they face the Dai Li and Azula does not. 

(The other part is that Azula stopped liking their uncle when she was quite young, at about the same time she stopped playing with Zuko and started tormenting him instead. She wanted to be her father’s perfect daughter, and she could tell her father resented his brother, even if she didn’t know why. So she resented him too. That’s not how she thinks of it – she resents him for other things, by now – but it’s where her disdain for him began.)

There was a real dragon, once, known as the Dragon of the West – the last dragon left alive, people thought. It was from this dragon that Iroh got his name.

The nobility of the Fire Nation have long considered it a mark of great honor to slay a dragon. It signifies mastery over the element, or maybe over nature, bla bla honor, imperialism, whatever. The real reason is very simple: Azulon tried for many years to get a dragon to become his companion, and every dragon he spoke to rejected him. His father, Sozin, had a dragon, and most of the great Fire Lords before him, so Azulon was furious beyond measure that he could not. When he took the throne, he chased down one of the many dragons that had rejected him, and he killed it. It wasn’t long before a Fire Nation noble, seeking promotion and acclaim, did the same. Azulon heaped accolades upon her head, and that was that.

It would be wrong to say that this was the most terrible of the Fire Nation’s depravities, but it did make many poets weep.

Anyway, one day when he was a young man, Iroh was traveling in the Earth Kingdom on an ill-advised undercover journey through enemy territory. He’d gotten separated from his companions, ended up thoroughly lost, and then was nearly caught by an Earth Kingdom governor who recognized him. He fled into the nearby mountains – and then, improbably, he stumbled upon the Dragon of the West.

The dragon was wounded and ragged, draped across the ridges of a small hillside like a torn ribbon. There were iron hooks and spears lodged between its scales, and its blood stained the grass. Smoke trickled from its nostrils. Its eyes were closed. 

Iroh’s heart filled with sudden grief, so cold and keening he could not breathe. Later, he would credit this moment as the first time he thought of the Fire Nation as anything other than righteous and great.

In another instant, a Fire Nation general appeared over the crest of a nearby hill and descended upon the dragon with a vicious frenzy. Iroh didn’t think before leaping across the divide between them and raining fire down upon the man’s head.

It was not a long battle. Even then, Iroh was already among the greatest warriors of his generation. When it was done, Iroh found himself suddenly learning a whole lot about dragon medicine on the fly. It took a while for the dragon to trust him, but in the end, Iroh accompanied it to that temple that Aang and Zuko found in the Indiana Jones episode, and learned a bunch of cool firebending theory from the temple guardians.

Iroh told the story at parties for years – how fierce the battle, how fearsome the dragon, how fiery its demise. How the very mountains shook with its death throes. How absolutely certain he was that there were no dragons left in the world, no sirree, not a one. The Age of Dragons is over and gone.

**_three_ **

Iroh never actually got a divorce. His father wouldn’t let him, and later his brother upheld that ruling – a disgrace to the throne, your wife leaving you because she can’t bear to see your face anymore. Because you can’t find words to say to each other anymore. He never got a divorce, but he hasn’t spoken to his wife in a long time. She lives with her sister, on one of the more distant islands. 

When Iroh was imprisoned in the start of Book Three, she sent him a letter. It was cold and brief, and Ozai had the prison guards read it to him, out of… some jealousy that still remained, some desire to see Iroh beaten, to see him brought as low as he could be brought. Iroh listened to it silently, eyes hooded and blank, which was how he always looked in prison when there was anyone around to see. 

In the letter, his wife said, _My heart is a barren winter, where only the star-white flowers of the senko tree could bloom. Hearing of this vile betrayal, I remember the dragon-slayers of our youth, and I long for a return to those days of chivalry and hope. The legacy of that time has died, but it pains me to think that we have fallen so far. I hope you still believe in repentance._

After the war, he finds her. “Thank you for your letter,” he says. “Thank you for believing in me when no one else did. I am sorry for how long it’s been.”

“I meant what I said in it,” she says firmly. “I am your wife and your ally. I should have been by your side, these many years.” 

“As I should have been by yours. I should never have left you to grieve alone.”

Iroh’s wife smiles, and kisses him on the cheek, and says, “Now, I think we should get down to business. Your nephew has the support of the people and of the Avatar, but that won’t keep him safe for long. I have a list for you of blackmail material for the nobility. Unfortunately it’s not comprehensive, but we’ve managed to assassinate or otherwise remove the worst ones in the chaos of the last year or two, so your boy should have a few years at least to solidify his claim.” 

Turns out Iroh’s not the only one who’s been running with an undercover network of powerful people looking to enact change. Hers is smaller, based almost exclusively in the Fire Nation, but it’s also a fair bit more… hands-on. 

Iroh immediately takes her back to Zuko and says, “Nephew, hire this woman as your advisor. Trust me, you want her on your side.”

**_two_ **

Iroh joins the White Lotus like this: One of its members was the governor of an occupied Earth Kingdom city, and when Iroh visited, they played pai sho. 

Iroh led with the white lotus tile, and the governor commented on what an unusual choice it was. Iroh responded with something cryptically philosophical, as he is wont to do – something about unexpected stratagems allowing for unpredicted victories. They played a full game of pai sho, and Iroh won, making use of clever strategies and maneuvers which are all part of the secret code that White Lotus members use to impart how much they know. Iroh’s new friend understood it all to mean that Iroh was a super high-ranking member of the organization, and he was here to help the governor with some problem plaguing the city.

Iroh had never heard of the White Lotus. He’s just really good at pai sho. When the governor asked for help, he gave it freely, because that’s just who he was as a person, even then. When word spread and more people started coming to him for aid, flashing a white lotus tile as they asked, he started to put two and two together.

Iroh didn’t tell anyone that no one ever actually recruited him, in case they decided to assassinate him or something. He picked up secrets as he went, through intuition and careful questions. It’s not like he disagreed with what they were doing, once he figured out what it was.

After the war, he tells King Bumi about all this, and they laugh together for a good long time.

**_one_ **

Iroh came home from the Siege of Ba Sing Se a broken man. That phrase gets thrown around a lot, to the point where it’s almost lost its meaning, but this is what it means here: 

In the week after coming home, after kneeling before his father’s throne and recounting his defeat, Iroh does not leave his office. For seven days and seven nights he sits at his desk, staring at the books and scrolls that he’d studied before leaving. They’re filled with tactics, strategies, accounts of historical battles. He wants to burn every last one of them. He can’t muster up the energy. 

On the eighth day his brother comes to his office and says that this has gone on long enough. The people are worried, his family is worried – it’s time for Iroh to leave his rooms and return to the world of the living. Iroh stares at him, stares through him, but Ozai doesn’t take no for an answer, forces Iroh to bathe, get dressed, go outside. Iroh follows his brother through the halls of the palace like a ghost, empty and drifting.

“You’re upsetting your wife,” Ozai tells him. It’s one of many things Ozai tells him, but it’s the only one that sticks. Iroh hasn’t seen his wife since he came home, and told her that he sent their son marching to his death. She had known already, of course – he’d sent word when it happened – but she threw herself into his arms and sobbed until she was empty. Through it all, Iroh held her and felt numb. His guilt and his grief had long since consumed him, until he no longer felt like a man at all, just a walking hole in the world.

The next day, and the next, and the day after that, Iroh forces himself to leave his rooms. He walks through the palace, face blank, not seeing any of the people who bow and step out of his way as he approaches, not hearing their hushed whispers as they stare and stare at their fallen prince. 

He walks, after a while, into the city, without a litter or a procession, unaccompanied by anyone but a squad of harried guards who were manning the palace gates when he went through and had to hurry to catch up. He stops in parks and at busy intersections, and spends hours watching the flow of traffic or the way the wind moves in the branches of blossoming trees.

This is very embarrassing for the crown. Ozai is sort of regretting having forced his brother out into the public eye. There are whispers and murmurs that the Fire Nation will surely crumble when Iroh takes the throne. Azulon is not pleased. 

Iroh’s wife goes to live with her sister. When she tells him she’s leaving, he nods, and says, “I understand.” When she’s gone, he puts his head down in his arms and cries, for the first time in a long time.

It’s not long after this that Iroh goes before his father – formally, requesting an audience and kneeling before the throne – and asks permission to run away. He wants to tour the kingdom, he says. He wants to see the results of their war with his own eyes, to remind himself what they fought for. 

Azulon is relieved. He sends Iroh off with his blessing, hoping his son will find his backbone out in the world where he lost it.

Iroh wanders, for a long time. When he comes back he is, once again, a changed man.


End file.
